


Midnight

by starrystarrytrouble



Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels)
Genre: Boss/Employee Relationship, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Late Night Conversations, Slow Burn, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27641969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrystarrytrouble/pseuds/starrystarrytrouble
Summary: MC finds Ethan at Donahue’s after his mom returns in chap 13.Chapter 13 added scenes and continuation, set the night before the final scene with Esme.
Relationships: Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Midnight

Stuck in his usual spot at the bar, Ethan savoured the silence and sipped his scotch. It was past closing time and the first time his mind felt empty all day. Just the lilt of jazz from the stereo, the rush of cars outside and liquor numbing his exhausted brain.

The door clinked open and cold air rushed in. He heard the click of heeled boots followed by the heady smell of jasmine and vanilla, and without even a glance at the entering figure he broke the quiet.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I took a wild guess after you stopped replying to my messages.”

Eve pulled up the seat next to him and nodded a greeting at Reggie, who paused towelling the inside of a glass to meet Ethan’s eye, impressed at his guessing skills.

 _Of course I knew it was her_ Ethan’s smirk said as he took another sip from his glass.

“How much have you had to drink?” Eve asked with a hint of amusement in her voice.

He didn’t answer.

“You should be at home, you’ve had a long day,” she said.

“I could say the same about you.”

“And leave without you?” she replied without missing a beat.

“Ethan…”

His name sounded desperate on her lips, the trace of mischief in her voice gone and replaced only with a note of concern. He felt the outline of her hand rubbing his back gently in a soft circle as she leaned in closer to look at him.

He closed his eyes.

Of all the memories of the day he’d been blocking out, this was his least favorite. Retreating to an on-call room like an intern. Her hands gentle over his back. Her low voice reiterating what he didn’t want to hear:

_It’s okay to be sad._

Followed by a momentary lapse in his judgement, something so primitive, so hardwired into his psyche that nothing could stop him.

_Go. Leave. Run._

That instinct to run had been catastrophic when it came to Eve.

He knew that. Felt it to his core. But it was too much to fight in that moment and he’d stalked out of the on-call room and buried himself in paperwork and patients. They didn’t talked about it again.

He came back to himself and looked at her intensely. The apology he was searching for too difficult to capture amidst exhaustion, alcohol and green eyes sparkling up at him in the empty bar.

Without thinking, he leaned in and pressed his mouth over hers. The tension of the day melted into the softness of her lips.

She smiled with a raise of her brow as they broke apart.

“You’re bold.”

“The only rule is not at the hospital,” he replied.

“You broke that rule _twice_ today.”

He smirked faintly, thinking of her return to the Diagnostics Office after checking on her landlord. Pressed against the locked door, she grinned as he nipped at her neck and slipped his hands under her dress in full appreciation of her outfit. 

He still didn’t regret it.

“You looked…” he gave her a quick appraising glance, “nice.”

“I’ll be sure to look nice more often then.”

Stroking her face gently, he kept holding her close.

“We have company” she mouthed, nudging her head towards Reggie at the other end of the bar.

“I’m sure Reggie will keep our secret.” Ethan said loudly, glancing over to the bartender.

“I don’t see nothing.” Reggie grinned, turning away.

Eve laughed, the sound comforting and rich, filling the bar. It was too much for him to resist. The warmth of the whisky coursed through him and he kissed her again, deeper this time, his intent clear as he began running his mouth down her neck.

She gasped and leaned in against him for a moment, grabbing his upper leg, her head tilted back and his lips on her collarbone. Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and he looked up to see her completely serene in his touch.

And almost as quickly, she came back to herself with a small start, refocusing her eyes to the bright glare of the barroom.

She pulled away.

He wished she wasn’t quite so sober. Just for once, in this moment, the complete distraction was what he needed and he wanted to carry on and be damned. The thought was reckless, lacking poise or control, but he struggled to shrug it off immediately.

“Alright, come on, we’re going,” she said firmly.

She jumped off the stool and winked at Reggie, who waved them off, that knowing smirk still plastered to his face.

Ethan groaned when the frozen air hit his face, the nearest thing to a slap he’d felt in years. Thank fuck he’d been drinking. He was sobering up fast but a little of the warmth still lingered, protecting him from the first hit of a brutal Boston winter.

“I shouldn’t drive,” he muttered.

“Yeah, no kidding. C’mon, we’re walking it off.”

She bit back a smile at the blank look on his pampered face when he realised she was serious.   
  
She stalked off ahead of him. A taste of his own medicine, his battered brain told him. Unintentional of course but karmic revenge. Did he even believe in that. Don’t think so.

As she walked ahead, moonlight from the clear sky danced off her and a fragment shone back at him. A glimmer of gold sparkling in her hair.

The same confetti he’d found earlier.

He thought back to the first time he saw her after he left her in the on-call room.

She was walking up a stairwell, a strand of the metallic confetti from the party she was organizing for a patient caught in her hair. She gazed up at him, checking to see if he was okay but before she spoke he was staring at the golden sparkle.

He went to reach for it as they passed.

It was a desperate moment, his head still flying with a thousand thoughts. His hand tangled into her hair, and he brought her closer. With total abandon he caught her lips, and she’d reciprocated with surprise bringing herself closer to him urgently.

Anyone could have seen them. He promised himself it was another one-off when they wordlessly broke apart and carried on separately.

It wasn’t an exception. _Everything_ had become the exception when it came to her.

He focused back on his surroundings, white powder shrouding Edenbrook in an icy blanket.

As they walked through the hospital parking lot he meant to keep his gaze fixed into the pristine night but involuntarily, against his better judgement, he looked towards the ER. All that he was trying to forget came crashing back, his head full, his organs heavy, the tug at his stomach unpleasant but so familiar.

She didn’t see him look over. She anticipated it.

“Your m… Louise. She’s doing okay. I checked before I left.”

Ethan nodded silent. Much as he hated to admit it, he’d checked as well.

Eve took his hand and soothed her thumb over his knuckles.

“Ethan, you can talk about it. I mean if you want to. It must’ve been a shock seeing her like that?”

“She’s not worth thinking about.”

What was supposed to sound indifferent came out fiercely bitter.

She didn’t buy it for a second.

“I meant what I said. It’s okay to be angry.”

He felt that instinct again. _Run._ But he fought it.

“What good is it being angry? That doesn’t do anything.”

She nodded. One look at her face and he knew she understood what he’d left unsaid.

They had mastered a perfect emotional choreography. Read between the lines. Decipher the unspoken. Anticipate and recalibrate.

Anger didn’t change anything, you had to use it to make things better. She knew that. It was what made her throw herself into work today. Otherwise it would only consume them. 

Anger had thrust him forward for years.

Was it anger or self-loathing? Something pushed him on, fuelled his momentum to work this hard, to focus relentlessly on his career. He’d always thought medicine had saved him but maybe it was a symptom not a cure.

He ran his free hand through his hair and rubbed his eyes.

Jesus, he needed a fucking shrink.

Fine white snow drifted down from the sky and he pulled his jacket tight. The whisky was wearing off and he started to feel the chill. She was still holding his hand, the only warmth left.

They walked past Symphony Hall. She rarely came to this part of town and the red brick caked in white looked magical. He watched her face light up and her footsteps slow as they tracked the icy path.

And just like that, his mind raced back to that on-call room. The moments after seeing that…that woman again.

_That was your mom Ethan. She nearly died. You can take a minute._

He wanted to stop. Really he did. A grown man closing in on 40 and this woman drifts in and makes him feel 12 again. She didn’t get to do that. He wouldn’t let her, couldn’t. Only, he did.

Every prize and accolade he’d ever won, every brick he’d built his life from was dust in the face of her. His so-called mother.

He spat the word out of his head.

Why did he always remember what he wanted to forget.

He was slow to realize Eve was mid-flow. He’d been conversing along with her yet he had no recollection of what he’d said. Maybe he wasn’t as sober as he thought.

“Esme’s got close to Levi. I see why, he’s so sweet and just _likeable_ , you know? And he’s in too much pain. But he’s her patient and I don’t know, I have a bad feeling about it.”

She looked to him for an answer.

“We both know what it’s like to get close to a patient. I know what Kyra means to you and you remember…Dolores.

“But while he’s a patient he deserves the most focused care we can offer him. And that means putting personal feelings aside.”

He felt like an utter fraud. When she was in that isolation room his personal feelings were the star of the show, lit up in neon lights for half the hospital to see.

She squeezed his hand.

“That’s what I said to her…in a roundabout way. But it’s reassuring to know you’d say the same. I guess I’m turning into you,” she said with a playful laugh.

“I have no doubt you’ll far surpass me.” He smiled for the first time since they left Donahue’s.

“ _Obviously_. But if I do, I’d like to think it’ll be because of you.”

She gave him a shy sideways glance, her eyes wide and warm. It was moments like this that baffled him. How she could have gone through so much, be so stubborn and determined and still come to him for mentorship. To challenge him as she always did, shout at him, call him out on his bullshit, bring chaos to his door and still looked at him doe-eyed. To actually _need_ him.

He never wanted her to stop needing him.

She needed him today on her first day back at work. Every night he’d spent with her over the last week, Eve had nightmares. In the dead of night, he held her tight. He had them too.

Neither of them were okay yet, but no matter how hard she pretended, she was far less okay.And for Louise to come back _now_ and mess with his head. The injustice of the timing. It was so unfair. He’d nearly lost Naveen, then Eve, and a shot of naloxone later, who knew his mom would be the easiest to save.

He shook his head and looked back onto Eve’s dark hair. She shivered into her grey coat as the snow began pelting down harder. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tucked her under him, kissing her head softly as they walked on.

After what she’d been through, she was back to helping everyone else. He listed everything she’d told him tonight. Her intern, her landlord, Varma, Sienna. Him.

They were both under the impression that they could fix everything themselves. He recognized it in her the moment they met. But whereas she knew she needed help and had friends she regularly lent on, he still believed that he could do it all himself.

 _Control what you can control_ , he always told her. That was what she was doing. But he remembered the way she shook as she woke from each vision of what had happened to her in the attack.

He needed to be there for her. To focus.

A part of him niggled. Wondered if she’d be better off without him. But he shot that thought down, refusing to entertain that idea again. In 37 years all he’d really learnt was how to run away.

In this moment, he became determined that this wouldn’t be the legacy he inherited from Louise.

They were in the Back Bay again now, the streets far whiter than they’d looked when he drove Eve home this morning. That world felt like a million hours away.

He looked back at her footprints trailing behind them. He found her marks everywhere. Lipstick on his glasses. Handprints on the steamed windows. Scratches on his back. Proof that she was really here, really alive.

The icy cold sapped the last of the liquor from his blood. Everything felt clear.

He paused as they neared his apartment.

‘Eve…”

He said her name in a way she’d never heard before. She looked up at him.

“I…”

He _meant_ to say it but hesitated.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” she looked surprised.

“Waiting for me.”

She knew he didn’t just mean tonight.

“I’m sure you can think of some way to make it up to me,” she whispered lightly.

“I’m sure I can.”

Moonlight filtered through, illuminating her face against the snow-covered sky and a smile danced across her face. She fluttered her lashes down, glancing at their joined hands before staring up and pressing her lips against his.

He lost himself entirely in the moment, her parted mouth and the rush of her tongue against his. Every single other thought of the night slipped back into their rightful place, abandoned as mere distractions, as he traced her body with his hands and pulled her closer. 


End file.
